The Big Keep: A Lena Dane Mystery (Lena Dane Mysteries) (7 page)

Then Lena had joined the case. She was only twenty-five, still a uniformed officer, although no longer really a rookie. Somehow she’d gotten some of the prostitutes to talk to her. She’d learned that the mutilator was another cop, a robbery-homicide detective named Matt Cleary whose grandfather had been Commissioner of the department. Lena had gone to Internal Affairs and tried to get him investigated, but nobody believed her, and the working girls refused to testify. Cleary had put the fear of God in them, convinced them that he had the whole police force in his pocket and there was nowhere they could run.

Eventually, Cleary had caught on to Lena’s insistence that he was a suspect. He’d come after her as she was leaving her Chicago PD station after work. There was a struggle, the paper claimed, and Lena had shot him in the face. Cleary had died. Nate searched further, and found a crime blog that had followed the story, dissecting every decision from the department. He tried to pick apart the subtext, and got the impression that Lena’s fellow officers hadn’t liked how she’d handled the whole thing. After his death, the prostitutes identified him as their attacker, but there was no other evidence linking Cleary to the assaults, and he had a lot of friends in the CPD. One of the articles Nate found was an editorial in the
Tribune
that made it sound like Lena and the prostitutes had made the whole thing up.
 

Nate thought of his impressions of Lena. Anyone who spent five minutes with her had to realize she wouldn’t do that, right? But then why would Lena quit the police force?

 
Nate checked the clock and groaned softly, his thoughts returning to the present. It was after four AM – should he call himself in sick tomorrow, catch up on some sleep? The idea was so tempting; Nate almost sagged with relief at the thought of it...but he couldn’t, he decided finally. He took enough risks as it was – what if the school caught him and tried to report his behavior to Tom? It would be a disaster, definitely not worth the extra sleep. Nate sighed and stood up, checking on his stepfather one more time before heading to his own bed.

8. Maybe That’s a Sign

On Thursday morning, Nate overslept again, and was late to homeroom, again. His teacher frowned disapprovingly when he scooted in just after the bell, but he gave her an apologetic smile that seemed to pacify her. The news of his father’s cancer had spread through the administration, although most of the teachers seemed to have forgotten the specifics. It was like his name was on some vague, half-acknowledged list of kids to pity, which was fine by him as long as no one got around to asking what he would do when his only parent died.

Third period was art, and the teacher Mrs. Winnepeg had been leading them through a unit on Oaxacan wood sculpture. Early in the week she had shown the class a PowerPoint on the small, lightweight carvings and the little town in Mexico where the style had originated, and for the last two days the class had been working with their own small chunks of balsawood and small carvings knives, which Winnepeg collected and counted at the end of every class, lest one of her students decide to go on a murder spree with a one-inch blade. Nate had finished his first sculpture a day early, and had gotten permission to start a second; a small, graceful Orca whale. Orcas weren’t part of the Oaxacan tradition, of course, but during study hour Nate had found a website about Inuit carvings, and had resolved to try merging the two styles. He worked the knife gently against the underside of the Orca’s dorsal fin, which he’d decided would flip over, the way Orca fins did in captivity, just because it was harder. By the end of class he was completely absorbed, actually forgetting about morphine prescriptions and home nurse schedules and the DNR. When the bell rang Nate looked up with a start – his classmates were jumping up to leave and he hadn’t begun to pack up his stuff. He was scraping shavings into the garbage when he heard his name called.

“Nate? Could you stick around for a second? Just for a second?” Winnepeg had a habit of repeating herself, like she was taking it for granted that no one would bother listening the first time. She looked friendly enough, but Nate felt like his heart had stopped beating and adhered itself to his ribcage. This was it. This was the “Nate, what will you do when your dad dies” conversation he’d been expecting for a year. Now that it was happening Nate almost felt relieved – at least there would be no more worrying, no more anxieties about what would happen when the ax fell. Winnepeg would turn him in to Social Services and he’d go into the foster care system and that would become his life. It was all over.

Shoulders slumping, Nate trudged up to the front of the room and the metal utility stool next to the teacher’s desk. She smiled at him, a thick forty-something Midwesterner with the obligatory chunky bead necklace.

“Nate, the Oaxacan bird you did yesterday is really good.
Really
good.” Nate fought to keep his face still. Wait, was this actually about school?

“I’ve been looking over some of your work for the last few units, and you really have a gift for sculpture. I’ve never seen this skill level by a freshman.” She pulled out Nate’s last project, a human hand sculpted in potter’s clay, from a box on her desk. A string wrapped around the index finger, leading to a dangling tag with Nate’s name and class period written on it. He focused on the tag, zeroing in on the swirling, graceful ‘A’ in Winnepeg’s handwriting.
 

The art teacher had paused, waiting for Nate to jump into the conversation, but he was too used to silences to fall for that kind of thing anymore. “Anyway,” she went on, “I saw the whale you’ve been working on, and I wanted to talk to you about appearing in the all-district art show in April. Entries were due two weeks ago, and it’s pretty competitive, but I’m on the committee and I’d really like to include your work. What do you think?” She smiled brightly at Nate, pleased with herself. This was probably every teacher’s dream, Nate thought, singling someone out for encouragement, trying to create an important place for themselves in the life of one of the kids. Racking up successes to be discussed at their retirement parties.
 

Nate didn’t need the attention. He stood up. “Thank you, but no,” he said politely. “Excuse me, I need to get to class.”
 

He left Winnepeg sitting openmouthed at her desk, grabbed his backpack and the small Orca sculpture and left the classroom. When he was safely in the hall Nate jerked his thumb over the little whale’s back, breaking off the hollowed dorsal fin. He dropped the whole thing into the garbage and hurried to Algebra just as the next bell rang.

That night there were three hangup calls on my cell phone, more asshats who wanted me to know they hadn’t forgotten about Matt Cleary. Years of training as a cop –not to mention a lot of time helping Bryce with middle-of-the-night calls from Ruby– kept me from just turning off the damn ringer, so I woke up every time. When the alarm finally went off I woke up more exhausted than when I’d gone to bed.

I decided to throw myself into Nate’s case to keep from falling asleep on my desk, starting with the former Savvy agents in New York. I found Casey Dickerson right away, but he had no memory of Jason Anderson or his book. I had to call three agencies to find Jennifer Wu – she’d moved around since arriving in New York – but when I finally got through to her assistant I spent fifteen minutes trying to convince him that I didn’t have a book proposal to pitch. Finally, Jennifer Wu got on the phone and I introduced myself.

“Jason Anderson? I really don’t remember the name.” She had a thin, high-pitched voice with a hint of a New Yawk accent, which was sort of a funny combination.

“He wrote under the name J.P. Hashly,” I said helpfully, and described
Sunset Dies
for her.

“Oh, yeah, that was really towards the end there,” she squeaked. “I think that was Nat’s book – Natalie Patton. She retired to Canada.”

“Do you remember anything about the author?”

“I did meet him briefly,” she replied. “Now we do everything via email and phone, but back then, there was more contact. I think he came off as a little...how shall I put it...
pretentious as hell
. Annoying guy.”
 

This from the woman who made Minnie Mouse sound like Al Green. Wu swore she didn’t know where Jason was now, and didn’t have any forwarding information for Natalie Patton. She was obviously losing interest in the conversation. “That’s okay. One other question,” I said hurriedly. “If a client of Savvy’s wanted to break into screenwriting, would you guys have handled that yourselves?”

A pause. “No, we were strictly books. Nat had a few contacts at the LA agencies, though, so she might have been able to point someone in the right direction.”

“Do you know which agencies?”

Big sigh. “I don’t remember the names...but I guess I could dick around on the internet for a bit, try to come up with them.”

“That would be great.” I gave her my email address.

“Hey, are you really a PI?” she asked before hanging up. She said ‘PI’ the way people do in movies, with that implication of sex and mystery and cigarette smoke curling up black and white walls.

“Yep, I really am.”

Her voice lowered a notch, sounding more like a cartoon squirrel instead of a cartoon mouse. “Is it really like in all the movies?”

Well, let’s see, I’m married, knocked up, lying to my husband, and I wouldn’t know a femme fatale if she asked to borrow my lipstick.
 

“Oh, yeah,” I said dryly. “Just like the movies.”

I spent the rest of the morning trying to track down Natalie Patton in Canada, without much luck. American private investigators have a pretty good network, but when you cross one of the borders all the rules change, and I didn’t have any contacts up north. From what I could tell Patton had moved to Vancouver initially, but she and her husband hadn’t purchased a home there or anywhere else I could find. I eventually ran out of ideas for websites and agencies to check. At 11:30 Bryce skipped into my office and perched uninvited on the empty green chair across from me, its twin once again demoted to padded file cabinet.

“So? We didn’t really talk yesterday, how’s it going with the” – his voice dropped theatrically – “pregnancy? Did Toby flip out? Have you been to the doctor? Can I be the godmother?”

Bryce is a psychology student, but apparently has very little insight into me. I actually found that kind of comforting. “Bryce, honey, I really don’t want to talk about it. It’s not that big of a deal.”

He gave a little gasp. “Not that big of a deal? You’re
with child
, Lena! You’re a mommy!”

I flipped a pencil at him, which he ducked easily. “I’m going to be a starving mommy, if you don’t go get me some lunch.”

“Fine.” Bryce stood regally, glaring down at me. “Your subtle evasion tactics work once again. I get it.” He turned to flounce out.

“Did you check in with Ruby today?” I asked before he made it through the doorway.
 

He turned around, hesitating. “Yeah. She’s doing okay, I think. I can never figure out if extra hours are good for her, because she has something to do, or bad for her, because she’s out in public more.” He shrugged. “But she’s gotten a lot better about telling me if it gets to be too much, so I figure as long as she
seems
okay...”

I nodded. Ruby was twenty-two, fully an adult now, but she had been disfigured five years earlier, her face carved up by a psychopath. The scars had been bad, not to mention permanent. Ruby had suffered a mental breakdown shortly after the assault, and spent years addicted to painkillers. She finally seemed semi-stable now, piecing together some income with a part-time job cleaning hotel rooms and the surveillance work for me. You wouldn’t think someone with severe facial scarring would be good at blending in while they took photos, but Ruby had spent the last five years
trying
to be invisible in a crowd of people. Bryce and I had both been pleased and surprised when she turned out to be good at it...but we still worried.

“Is she still having the nightmares?” I asked quietly.
 

“Actually, they’ve been getting better,” he said, face brightening. “So maybe that’s a sign that the overtime’s okay, right?” I nodded hopefully, understanding how desperately Bryce wanted Ruby to get better. After all, we were the two people in the world who felt responsible for her.
 

Early that afternoon Jennifer Wu emailed me a list of three boutique agencies in LA that she thought Natalie Patton might have worked with. She also included a postscript that I should call her if I was ever interested in pitching a true-crime autobiography, and I snorted, imagining the titles.
What to Expect When You’re Detecting
, that would have to be one of the nominees, right?

The three agencies were called Venture, A.R. Talent, and Chrisana Lyn’s, respectively. Taking a cue from my morning conversations with the New York agents, I called all three agencies posing as a producer who’d gotten hold of an old script and was trying to track down the screenwriter. Everyone was suddenly eager to help me, but no one had a client named Jason Anderson, J.P. Hashly or James Jacob Tyler. Venture had a Thomas Anderson, and Chrisana Lyn’s had several J.P.’s but that was about it.

I leaned back, spinning slowly in the chair, thinking about Jason Anderson. All kinds of different people go missing, for all kinds of different reasons. But every missing persons case starts with the same two steps: do research on the computer, and talk to friends and family. I would guess 90 % of my missing persons are found, dead or alive, in those first two steps. But I hadn’t found anything online, and there were no family or friends to speak of. It seemed like things were pointing toward LA, but I had no hard evidence that he’d really moved there. Jason was a ghost, a shadow connected to his son’s world only by the thinnest of threads—his deceased mother, a fictionalized account of Jason’s life. And to make matters worse, the guy seemed to try on and discard identities like new clothes. One minute he’s a husband and father in suburban Chicago, then he’s a tortured novelist, and then, if Tom Christianti was right, a Hollywood screenwriter. Why did he keep changing his name, his identity? What was he
looking
for?